WTF #2

Ah, the lovely wonderfulness of Lucha Libre. Last time it was midgets in monkey suits, but that was CMLL. They're pretty normal.

This week it was TNA's Mexican sister promotion AAA.

It started off pretty normally with a six-man tag match between a team of vampires against a team of Christians.

Normal enough stuff.

Then they sent out three reasonably attractive women wrestlers, and then their opponents-Hideously Ugly Transvestites!

On the left we have Pimpinella, and on the right, with the most disturbing use of the ThunderCat's symbol ever is May Flowers. They were teaming with a short, chubby Golddust knockoff (of course they were).

Wow.

Mexican wrestling makes my brain hurt.

Warren On Enterprise

From Warren Ellis' Bad Signal:

"ENTERPRISE is cancelled. CREATIVELY cancelled. They actually did the 'spooky aliens observe the human race and are shocked by the human capability for compassion' story. Again. I pick up an episode online every now and then to see how it's surviving, because I have an acquaintance associated with the show, but the sheer gall of the programme to be this bad was actually surprising. They could have just put a title card up for 44 minutes which read FUCK YOU FOR WATCHING. REGARDS, THE MGMNT."

Have they started doing the holodeck gone awry episodes on Enterprise yet? Do they have a holodeck yet? Does anybody actually watch the show?

Damnit

I have my heart all set on hating Constantine before it even comes out, and WB and DC do a good job of giving me plenty of material for my hate--then they go and get John Shirley to do the novelization (plus two comic-continuity Hellblazer novels as well).

And I saw two versions of the trailer that didn't look too terrible.

Maybe I'll see it.

Damn and blast this just brings to my attention my own dickish fanboyishness.

The Randy

Ask and ye shall receive. For Tommy:
Randy Orton: "The single most greatest moment in my life happened in Toronto, Canada"

Out and About

Today on NPR I heard the results of a poll that said 50% of Americans feel that President Bush is a unifier, and 50% feel that he is a divider.

I may be a bit dense, and perhaps they were cracking a very dry joke, but if the public is halfway split on whether or not he is a unifying force, doesn't that mean that he isn't?

...

The Screensavers are showing a DJ with one turntable right now as their musical guest. Firstly, why the hell do they have musical guests now? I'll buy the one time TMBG gig, but a damn DJ? Wow. Woopty-Fwipity-Scratchity-Doo! They had to go to Los Angeles why?

...

Today I read the comics adaptation of the film adaptation of the Hellblazer comic. I realize that all the big name creators are probably all tied up with their own projects, or have some actual dignity and aren't able to come in and make this thing halfway decent. It's not like any comic adaptation of a film outside of say, Walt Simonson's Alien, or the Bladerunner one is any good, but they could really do better than what they did.

If you're going to publish a trade size book with the adaptation, why not go the full distance with the story length instead of forcing the writer to cram so much exposition into each panel that when there's a panel without dialogue it feels so out of place?

Steven Seagle isn't a bad writer, but he must have had some suck of a story to work with here.

There's what, 160 issues of Hellblazer out there currently and this is the best story they could cobble together?

I still say that there is nothing in this story that required them to license the property, what with its extreme lack of much semblance to the source material other than character names.

Now I'm sure I don't want to see the movie, even though I picked up the second volume of Hellblazer stories written by Warren Ellis today.

...

No little kid, I don't need you to show me how to drive the tank in the new Mercenaries game, I may be old, but I can figure it out for myself. Wait your damn turn.

...

Episode 2 of Tilt is on, and the show still sucks.

Judge to Marvel--Make 10% Stan's

Via NEWSARAMA

Stan Lee stands to gain a vast amount of income that he can use to fund even more businesses that will fail (Stan Lee Media anyone?).

He just won the first round of his suit against Marvel Comics for monies owed from films based on his original characters.

A Manhattan Court found that Marvel has to pay 10% of the profits from these films to Stan, since that is what is in his contract as publisher emeritus.

Good to see at least one of the creators getting paid, now if they can just do something for the rest.

Tilt

God Bless ESPN, they still haven't learned that they are a sports station and not a sports entertainment station. Their new show Tilt, starring Michael Madsen tries really hard to take hold of the Texas Hold 'em fascination and give it a Sopranos style edge.

It fails pretty badly. With ESPN unwilling to go the extra yard and include the cursing and the violence, it just comes off bland.

It's about a group of poker players who have all been broken in some way by Michael Madsen's character, the Matador, who we are told got his name because he draws in the young players and cuts them up. The group is bankrolled by a mysterious older poker player, and they may not all be being honest with one another.

The show is flat, with large portions of dialogue devoted to exposition, and the poker in it is pretty boring. There's voiceover narration at the beginning and the end, but it doesn't flow well with the rest of the show since there are a variety of viewpoints, including a Midwestern sheriff who is also out to bring the matador down. They try to give him a hard edge, but it comes off pretty small time.

Even the great Michael Madsen wasn't able to save this one.

Impact Thoughts

Chris Candido was on this weeks TNA Impact in a match against Dustin Rhodes. Man alive he looked bad. He needs to go on the Simon System.

Also it's good to see that Jerry Lynn is there on the show in at least a non-wrestling capacity as one of the security guys. Now if they'd just get him back into action.

Cassidy O'Reilly has gotten much, much better since his Hot Shots days.

I miss Chicken Hat.

For all of you who have no idea what I'm talking about here, don't worry, most wrestling fans don't either.

Bowling

Went bowling with my sister tonight. We went to the new chain bowling alley here in town.

I bowled very well for the first 1 1/2 games, until a family of ten moved onto the lane beside us, and put all five of the 3 to 5 year olds on the lane beside us. Does it make me a bad person to think they should put all the large families with little children down on the end together? Profanity is an integral part of my bowling game, and I don't feel right letting loose with a big string with a three year old standing right beside me.

"STFU Donnie."
"Don't fuck with de Jesus."

I did like the lack of cigarette smoke and beer bar stylings that Classic Lanes provides. I also think that this new place actually oils the lanes, and the balls they have don't all have inch deep crevices all over their surfaces.

I also discovered that my Hawaiian Bowling Shirt is necessary for me to play passably.

Vonnegut Creative Writing 101

From the Introduction to Bagombo Snuff Box by Kurt Vonnegut:

Now lend me your ears. Here is Creative Writing 101:

1. Use the time of a total strange in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things--reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them--in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they should finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

These rules are intended to govern the writing of short stories, of which Vonnegut says: "It proves that a short story, because of its physiological and psychological effects on a human being, is more closely related to Buddhist styles of meditation than it is to any other form of narrative entertainment."

He also makes the point elsewhere that not only do short stories have a calming influence on the reader, much like meditation, but they have the added bonus of allowing you to meditate with another person, even one long dead.

Via Mefi:
The Greatest Essay Ever Written

Sex Bomb

When I saw the headline "PENTAGON TOYS WITH SEX BOMB" on Drudge, I of course thought of the classic Tom Jones song, but it would have made no sense for them to be toying with that song, would it?

Come to find out, that wasn't what the story was about, rather it was a story about discarded ideas for non-lethal chemical weapons, such as the titular sex bomb, which was described thusly:

Most bizarre among the plans was one for the development of an "aphrodisiac" chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other. Provoking widespread homosexual behaviour among troops would cause a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale, the proposal says.

I'll leave the jokes on that one for you guys to make amongst yourselves. I have to think that there'd be, you know, moral and legal implications to a bomb that would pretty much be a giant date-rape pill.

I like the descriptions of the other bombs that were considered.

Other ideas included chemical weapons that attract swarms of enraged wasps or angry rats to troop positions, making them uninhabitable. Another was to develop a chemical that caused "severe and lasting halitosis", making it easy to identify guerrillas trying to blend in with civilians. There was also the idea of making troops' skin unbearably sensitive to sunlight.

I believe Tommy and I had a conversation about bombs filled with angry bees or other bugs that would be dropped on enemy troops.

And, the other ideas were a morning breath bomb and a sunburn bomb? Um, ok.

Credit Card Signature Prank

By way of Mefi:
This fella experimented to see just how different you could make the signature on your credit card receipt before anyone notices:

Next time I bought something that required a signature, I considered just creating a rectangle of solid black. Then I thought a grid might be weirder:

Only the most Matrix-obsessed fanboy would actually use a grid for his signature, but the chick at the Cheesecake Factory didn't look twice. I mean, I didn't even have on a trenchcoat.

Note to Self

The Shallowford Road Wendy's is again under boycott due to poor service. How do you run out of Coke?

Other restaurants also under boycott:

McDonald's in Athens--It took more than twenty minutes to get my food in the drive in, ten of which were spent waiting after they said "Hold on just a minute," when I first pulled up.

KFC in Athens--Is it so hard to get my order right? Three times wrong in a row is just ricockulous. When I say Chicken Sammitch, I want chicken in between two slices of bread, not chicken inside a tortilla. Sammitch means bread. And what's with the no squash or okra on the buffet bar?

Thanks, and come again.

White Noise

White Noise, starring Michael Keaton, is largely a mish-mash of horror film cliches. In the end it isn't really that memorable or original.

It does a good job of mimicking Japanese horror styles for its rhythms, pacing and cinematography.

The acting is fine, and the direction is workable, but I just don't think this one will have that much staying power.

If you pay attention you can guess who the killer is when he appears for the first time (sorry if that is a spoiler that there is a killer, but, oh well.)

By the numbers horror.

2 babes

More Sounds

"That's how I roll."

"I pooped a..."

Sounds of the Day

"Get your human penis out of my wife's sharkgina!"

"You dumbass!"

WTF?

Say what you want about American Pro Wrestling being an over the top sideshow soap opera, but wrestling in Mexico has two foot tall midgets in monkey suits.